In solidarity with everyone experiencing the brutal winter, we’re turning our attention over the next two weeks to the home: stories about stocking your pantry, cooking hearty food, assembling the perfect home theater and sprucing up your pad -- with a few glimpses of warm weather and tropical locations for good measure.

1:15 p.m. ET | Dover Plains, NY -- We've been enthusiastically told no fewer than four times that "trap shooting is golf with guns", but equating an activity that uses twelve-gauge shotguns to explode clay targets with the world of outlandish polo shirts and John Daly seems like a gross disservice.

2:30 p.m. GMT | Edinburgh, Scotland -- That’s what the guy in the shop selling scarves told us, anyway: that James Wood & Sons, Wood’s for short, was the oldest place to get a cut in Scotland’s capital city.

The Thanksgiving turkey is the one dish each year that’s make or break, and it’s all yours. Get the turkey right and you'll be giving warm handshakes and sipping bourbon all night; dry it out and you’ve brought a dark cloud over the extended family. The good news is, roasting the big bird is easier than running the fumblerooski against the in-laws -- and that works every year. To find the most direct route to turkey perfection, we consulted with chef Harold Moore for his foolproof recipe.

Mulled wine is the perfect drink for the holiday season: just pleasant and alcoholic enough to warm everyone up, but not like handing out rounds of high-octane Manhattans that could turn Thanksgiving dinner into an episode worthy of Jenny Jones. We tapped the expertise of Jane Elkins, former and current barkeep at some of New York City's best cocktail haunts, for three variations of mulled wine, each rooted in tradition and brushed up with ingenuity from behind her bar.